I am going to explain why managers sometimes seem like they do not listen to engineers and why this may cause them to look like idiots. I will grant you that some managers are idiots, but while it may look like sometimes they are ignoring your advice, that is not what is actually going on.

I will admit that the evidence of idiocy seems strong. An engineer will say, “I told them that if they made this decision that this bad thing was going to happen. They ignored my advice and did it anyway. Now this bad thing happened, just like I said. Why are they such idiots?” I will explain why that situation can occur and why the manager did the right thing. Read the rest of this entry »

The world is just full of people with bad ideas. You can’t swing a dead cat without whacking some goofball upside their oversized craniums, craniums sloushing over with crummy ideas for a better this or a better that. Now, I am all for making things better. Far be it for me to discourage entrepreneurs from making and marketing a better mousetrap and harvesting the untold millions that would inevitably accompany the mountain of dead or captured mice. Read the rest of this entry »

New Bluetooth Runs for a Year Off a Watch Battery
There’s little stopping Bluetooth from making its way into more devices, but its battery drain is many times that of, say, tried and true IR. But a new, lower power Bluetooth is coming next year.